Tag: prize

When I was a senior in high school, my English class had to spend our last semester writing a
term paper on a classic author. I ignorantly chose Edgar Allen Poe. If you know anything
about Poe, you’ll understand why it was an ignorant decision. He is dark and scary and…well,
dark. For weeks, I researched and wrote, erased and started over. It got to the point that I had
a recurring dream about the macabre writings. Every night, my dream would begin with me
running through a field toward a circle of car headlights. In the middle of those headlights, was
a deep, dark, dreadful pit. I ran toward the light with the hope that someone there could catch
and save me from running head-over-heels into the pit. I needed to be saved from the most
dreadful and ancient-looking man that my psyche could conjure up. I knew with all my being
that I needed to get to that light before the darkness swallowed me up. And that old, decrepit
man; he chased me as if he were a young gazelle leaping across an African prairie. He ran like
the devil himself.

I will never forget that dream. Running toward light while surrounded by utter darkness.
Tripping, then getting up to run as fast as I can again. Trying my hardest to be a good English
student and get that paper done, and done well. A race between me and the devil. If I lost, I
failed; and he won. Similar to my analogous dream, we are surrounded by darkness, just as
John 3:19 attests the harsh truth: “This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and
people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone
who does wicked things hates the light.” We choose darkness because we think it covers our
sins, but as time goes by, we begin living in paranoid fear of that darkness, of our sins being
“found out”. Our world collapses under the weight of this fear. We begin doubting who our
friends are, losing some altogether, because of that paranoia. Then our life turns to despair
and the cycle goes on. Living in a pit of darkness brings fear, doubt, despair. In John 12:35,
we are told that “the one who walks in darkness does not know where he is going”. We see no
assurance of salvation in darkness, because we can’t SEE at ALL! But there IS hope in the
LIGHT! Acts 26:18 assures us that we can “turn from darkness to light and from the power of
Satan to God, that we may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are
sanctified by faith in me.”

We are not doomed to live in darkness! We are meant to bask in the glorious light of the
Heavenly Father! I feel like that old man was chasing me to a pit of failure, as I was running out
of time to finish that paper. But the outcome of the dream was just unbelievable, God-gifted.
Nothing I could have ever imagined up from my own mind. On the night before I finally had to
turn my paper in, that same dream was different. In the dream, I walked out of my house to go
to school, and that old man was lying prostrate on top of my car. You see: my paper was
finished. I had won the race and worn that old man out! But most importantly, I no longer was
being pursued by Satan to an eternal pit of darkness.

This life is a race. 2 Timothy 4:7 declares Paul to have fought the good fight, finished the race,
and kept the faith. Don’t you want to be able to proclaim that? I know I do! Hebrews 12:1
says we should lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and run with endurance
the race that is set before us. We can choose to race to the light, or to be chased through the
darkness. We will win the prize of all prizes if we choose to come up out of the pit of sin that
holds us in that horrible darkness and fear and despair. Let go of those sins that have you
weighted down. You can’t run a race with extra baggage slowing you down! Give it to the
Father of Light, for He has already stowed our baggage away on the cross. There is hope in
the Light, friends. Run the race with endurance toward the bright and glorious Prize!